Computing devices are becoming more accessible and common in public use locations such as libraries, internet cafes, print/copy stores, and the like. These computing devices can be used by multiple people each day who conduct a variety of tasks, such as conducting internet searches, sending and receiving emails, creating and publishing documents, and so forth. With a wide variety of tasks to perform, the computing devices execute a number of differing applications. Many of the applications and also the computing devices' operating systems, during their execution, attempt to write data to non-volatile storage devices, such as a hard drive of the computing device. Additionally, computer users may also attempt to download files from remote locations such as files obtained over the internet or other computer network to non-volatile storage devices of the computer.
Writing data to non-volatile storage devices can cause problems with the operation of the computer device such as overwriting critical files for the operation of the computing device, infecting the computing device with a computer virus, corrupting data, and the like. Additionally, private files, email messages, etc. may be inadvertently written to a hard drive of a public use computing device thereby compromising the privacy of personal files of the users of the computing device.
Methods of the known art for preventing data from being written to non-volatile storage devices have been utilized which can provide write protection of a storage media by preventing data from being saved at the sector/block level of the storage device. However, while these methods provide a level of write-protection at lower levels of the storage media, they do not permit write-protection to be implemented at a more precise level.